I just read the latest screed by Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, in the On Faith section of The Washington Post. The left-wing Catholic presumes to question the faith of those who oppose Obamacare.

The question of health care insurance is an example of how persons professing to be the most religious among us can nonetheless violate basic teachings of Jesus, writes Stevens-Arroyo, whose brand of Catholicism would be alien to Pope Benedict XVI.

It goes against Christian discipleship, he asserts, to repeal the Affordable Care Act without offering a substitute that will provide for 40 million uninsured, most of them children.

That 40 million figure Stevens-Arroyo cites is a canard. It misleads the public about the breadth and depth of the uninsured population.

The reality is that the ranks of the truly uninsured  those that desperately want health insurance but cant get it  is far smaller than 40 million, as documented by Michael Tanner, senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., co-author of Healthy Competition: Whats Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.

Indeed, to inflate the size of the uninsured population, Obamacare supporters count those that have been without health insurance at any point during the course of a year, even for a day or two.

But the governments original definition of uninsured were those lacking health insurance for an entire year, or longer. Only 30 percent fall into that category, according to Tanner.

Interestingly, most of the uninsured are young and in good health, Tanner attests. Roughly 60 percent are under age 35, and 86 percent of them report good or excellent health.

Not all of the uninsured are necessarily poor. In fact, 43 percent boast incomes that are more than two-and-a-half times the poverty rate. Most of them could buy health insurance if they really wanted, but choose not to.

Then there is the roughly one-quarter of the uninsured population is eligible for Medicaid and the State Childrens Health Insurance Program that hasnt enrolled, according to Tanner. That includes 64 percent of all uninsured children and 29 percent of parents with children.

So that gets us to the segment of the uninsured population about which the American public should be most concerned, on which the government should concentrate its attention: poor, working Americans who cannot afford health insurance, but who do not qualify for government programs.

We do not need Obamacare to provide for that population. The simplest, most cost-effective solution  broached nearly a decade ago by Gerald Kominsky, associate director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research  is to take the federal and state dollars that now go to hospitals to treat the truly uninsured and use the funds instead to purchase health insurance for them.

Kominskys prescription might not satisfy Stevens-Arroyo, who suggests that anything short of Obamacare is contrary to the teachings of Jesus. But I believe the good Lord would find it acceptable.

And I would wager that the same columnist would back up BH0’s point at the National Prayer Breakfast that Jesus also said that “You are your brother’s keeper.” And thus we much have that as part of the unification of church and state, except, of course, when it is advantageous to push for the separation of religion from any mention any where except inside state licensed churches.

jesus wasnt in politics—”AT ALL!!!”.(render unto ceaser the things that are ceasers and render unto god the things that are gods). If jesus wanted to heal someone, then he healed them- in several cases rose the dead..

[13] Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

[14] Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” [15] Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

[16] And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. [17] He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

[18] “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. [19] And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ‘

[20] “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

[21] “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

The funny thing is that there are times when the apostles were confused about his future self-prophecies and believed, like many Jews at the time, that the messiah would come and set up a political kingdom (as they knew them then) and that would mark his triumph.

13
posted on 04/02/2012 3:38:02 PM PDT
by Secret Agent Man
(I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)

“Hummmm, in my bible Jesus provides a bunch of healing and health care but never once suggested government mandated socialized medicine.”

He certainly doesn’t chastise “the community” in the Good Samaritan parable; He doesn’t think highly of those who pass him by without taking any action, but He certainly doesn’t think the whole town should kick in to pay the innkeeper who cares for the man until the Samaritan returns.

“Charity is all about government coercion, not free will or grace, thats the real Christian message.”

That’s a good point, and one that makes it very easy for me to avoid giving to charity in the traditional sense. My taxes are already used to do it involuntarily, while I feed my family by shopping for groceries with a credit card.

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